UNNATURAL SELECTION

I received an article in my inbox overnight from Medium, written by Harvard Astrophysicist Avi Loeb called “What Does Extraterrestrial Intelligence Look Like?  Professor Loeb, who sits on the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST), is perhaps best known for his work on the Galileo Project and the search for extraterrestrial life (specifically, evidence of alien technology on Earth.)  The premise of his work is that the Earth may have been visited in the distant past by extraterrestrials or interdimensional beings, and that there is a silver bullet or smoking gun “out there” somewhere, as Fox Mulder might say.

Where AI might be useful

In this article, Loeb speculates on the possibility of biological life forms or artificial intelligence (AI) or robotic life elsewhere in Space.  He also emphasizes that our own AI systems would be invaluable in deciphering any communication from alien life forms (ALF’s.) But on that point, he says, the psychologists might be more important than scientists in understanding the intentions of such extraterrestrial life.  Says Loeb:

Psychologists would be better suited for figuring out a proper response to alien intelligence than physicists, because they have better skills for dealing with intelligent systems.”

Noting that “our geopolitics is dominated by conflicts over terrestrial territories,” Loeb comes to the heart of the matter:

The most intelligent beings [in the galaxy] would aim to live as long as they can, taking advantage of interstellar journeys to visit real estate that lies beyond their birth planet. Any culture engaged in acts of violence and destruction is heading in the wrong direction on the highway of natural selection. It will definitely not be the fittest to survive over billions of years.”

Loeb is saying that given our tendencies to squabble over land and power and our technological advances in weaponry, specifically in terms of weapons of mass destruction, we might reasonably conclude that nature has–or perhaps, we ourselves have–unnaturally selected us for extermination and extinction.  What other lifeform on this planet wantonly, whether in the name of ethnic cleansing or by senseless massacres, destroys others in its species?  And why have we not learned the lessons of World Wars I and II?

Charles Darwin laid down the foundation to the Theory of Evolution.  There are certain assumptions to this theory as there are in any theory.  One assumption deals with mutations and variations within a species, which, if useful, move the species to the next level of sophistication and survival.  Another assumption deals with species such as man having a common ancestor with other species (such as apes.)  Time is an important assumption as well.  Billions of years were needed for the Sun and our Earth to have developed, and hundreds of millions of years on top of that for life to emerge (simple to complex) on Earth. Another Darwinian assumption is natural selection.  There are many definitions here, some more complicated than others, but a good working definition is as follows:

Natural selection is defined as a process in nature through which living organisms adapt and change in response to an environmental condition. And organisms that are better suited to their environment tend to survive longer and produce more offspring.”

I do not subscribe root and branch to Darwin and evolution as they are taught today.  However, I do believe that species adapt (or not) to changes in their environment.  This is natural selection. If they can adapt, they move forward, like early man. If not, they die like the dinosaurs, or like movie rental outlets that featured beta tapes long after consumers had gone digital to DVD’s and streaming movies via pay-for-view.

We saw natural selection during the late pandemic where one deadly COVID-19 variant, such as Alpha detected in September 2020, was crowded out by the Delta variant detected in June 2021. Another example of adaptation might be the Methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA) bacteria or treatments for sexually transmitted infections (gonorrhea and syphilis) that prove ineffective because the bacteria has developed resistance to it.  This resistance comes from exposure to potent antibiotics but in less than clinically effective doses.  In other words, the bacteria develop an immunity to the drug of choice.  This is why doctors today are so stingy about prescribing antibiotics and insistent that a sick person complete their course of treatment even after they feel better.

The rise of man

Part of the reason humans are the dominant lifeform on earth is because we can adapt in ways that other lifeforms cannot.  We can regulate our body temperature in ways that reptiles cannot. Our brains allow us to design machines that amphibians cannot fathom and our hands and thumbs allow us to build these machines in ways other mammals cannot.  To our discredit, we’ve also caused the extinction of different species in our world whether by hunting them for sport, ivory or hides, or by destroying their habitats.  Now, according to some scientists, we humans are on the verge of being threated by artificial intelligence (AI.)  It is no longer a matter of decades, but rather years and maybe only months before AI can out-perform us intellectually.  We are beyond the tipping point and AI (including robots) may anticipate–and resist–efforts by us to shut them down.

Natural selection is a good thing.  It tends to improve a species, but in what ways are humans improving?  Designer babies?  Novel treatments for pattern baldness or weight loss? The erratication of diseases?  We’ve eliminated smallpox in the wild, and can eliminate polio, but in parts of the world, doctors and nurses who provide free polio vaccine are being hunted down and murdered.  In this country, more and more people are refusing to get vaccines, for measles as an example.

Hitler conquered Poland because the German army (Wehrmacht) was larger and more mechanized than the Polish soldiers who rode horses into battle.  A total of 1.5 million German soldiers invaded Poland in 1939 assisted by 2,000 tanks. But with the advent of nuclear weapons, even a small country like North Korea can destroy a dozen or more cities of a much larger country such as the U.S. without even leaving their borders, 5,800 miles away.

The fall of man

Loeb says that an intelligent culture elsewhere in the galaxy that is advanced enough to contact us, or to explore the heavens and travel to Earth is likely one that has stopped squabbling among themselves and has learned to work together for their common good.  Contrast this with our Congress where one party refuses to work together with the other even on matters of national security.

Loeb notes:

So far, humans have celebrated their local status as the most intelligent species on Earth. This legitimized listing lifeforms with a lower intelligence on restaurant menus.“

Just as Darwin might say humans were naturally selected to be the dominant lifeform on Earth, we seem to have taken a different, self-destructive tact in pursuit of conquest and dominance. This promises to be our own undoing.

In some perverse way, the war in Ukraine, the terrorism and violence in the Holy Land and the increasing threats of nuclear war are a form of unnatural selection.  We are not progressing, advancing as a species, but rather fighting each other over race, religion, resources, ideology, prestige and the pursuit of power. By the end of the century, who will be left standing?

Heaven help us.